Light! Flat in my house of darkness, I watched a miserable little funnel of foggy light the way one might watch the Last Hope balanced on a fatal abyss. That light was the mother of the world. Down in my sunken coffin it was like the sun. By craning my head from its corrosive pillow I could stare down my nose at the fainting little ray, and I wept as I watched it there. I perceived I’d been extravagant with the sun, before. I’d blown out matches. I’d complained at electric signs. I’d walked in the shade. I know better manners, now. I know one could almost do without air if there were light for the seeing of the end. How I breathed at that stingy handful of illumination, sprained my neck to keep it in view, begged it to stay.
Thud! It was gone. A new sound beating through the coffin lid. Thud-thud-thud. I howled to block the echo from my ears, but the thudding was louder than my tongue in that black prison. That was the thudding of clods raining down on a casket — more particularly, my casket! I didn’t stop screaming, but my throat did, and I had to lie there on my back and listen to a thickening blizzard of clay. It was loud at first. Too damnably loud. Then it receded, was muffled, fainter, faint. Too damnably faint.
By this time my ears were begging to hear those clods the way my eyeballs had entreated at the light. Finally, like the light, the sound was extinguished, and the only echo in the coffin was the rustling of constricted movements, little scratchings in the dark, the blood-pound in my ears. Distinctly I could hear my boot heels rattling on the floor at their end of the box, air chugging in my nose. The clod that had plugged the hole in the lid had trickled a spoonful of earth on my chest and the weight was like a child’s foot pressing down. I rolled on my side to rid myself of this, but the pressure persisted. Then I hitched along the coffin floor until my toes touched end. Then I hitched back into the head-end until my scalp bumped. Then I lay very still trying to pretend I wasn’t there, trying to pretend I wasn’t afraid of the dark.
Dark? Mix all the blacks together — Black Friday, black plague, black mass — and the color would have shone as radium in that rosewood casket buried on a hilltop in dark Haiti. The black was too thick to breathe. Or was the low altitude affecting my respiration? Certainly I was making a noise about it. The blackness made a click each time I sucked it through my teeth. My head was starting an ache. Craftily I figured that the coffin was about seven by two and a half, and then I was frantic, trying to remember about cubic inches of air, and all at once I was remembering a black-cloaked figure standing atop a mound of clods, a snoring sermonish voice — “I shot her through her little eyes — ”
“Pete!” I screamed. “Pete’s been killed!”
The acoustics were bad. My cries were hammered from lead, loud without color or resonance. Afterward, I couldn’t tell whether I had shouted or thought I shouted. Desperately I tried to lie inert and reserve the oxygen supply, and then I would think of that dent in the hard floor under my shoulder-blades, I would see that one-eyed black silhouette crucified against the yellow moon, memories would cry aloud in my mind, I would catch myself thrashing, rolling from side to side, drumming my uncontrollable heels, fighting in my strait-jacket of ropes.
God, I’d used up more air! I ought to be thinking about Pete and here I was selfishly worrying about air, panicked because my head was stuffing as if with a bad cold. Pete was dead; what did I want to live for? Why was something deep inside of me secretly hunting an escape from this thing? The moment reason told me there was no escape, this thing inside of me cried, “No, no, there must be a way, you don’t want to die!”
I cried, “What the hell do I care?” and then lay stiff with panic wondering how long I’d been down there, if the grave was a quarter filled, half filled, three-quarters filled? Was I afraid to die? Was I going to draw my final breath in a squeal of terror when the only girl I’d ever loved was gone and there was no reason to live in a world where such a thing could happen? No, no, I didn’t want to die. My mind wanted to die, but my body wanted to live. I couldn’t help it. Those arms and legs and lungs were another part of me, and they kept on fighting like individuals, madly refusing logic, philosophy, noble resignation, heroism. No martyrdom for my heels, they were going like drumsticks.
All at once I was remembering a news story I’d once read in the Trib about two mechanics asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in a garage. Revived by serum injections they were told by astonished doctors that their hearts had stopped for twelve minutes. Didn’t one die when the heart stopped? The curious physicians wondered how it felt to be dead. Uneasily the garage men reported they hadn’t felt anything at all. Down there in my coffin, I recalled remarking on this article to Pete.
“There’s Death for you,” I had complained. “Like fainting. Gets half a column on the second page. See, you go out like a candle. Blank. There isn’t any heaven.”
“Who wants to believe in that old-fashioned heaven?” Pete had demurred. (Her voice spoke out of memory so distinctly that I could almost hear it). I could remember the scene of the discussion; we’d blown ourselves to the Grand Central Oyster Bar, she was perched on a stool, smiling over the newspaper. “Who wants Saint Peter to pin ’em with a lot of dusty medals for good deeds they should’ve done anyway? Even so, this news item doesn’t prove death is a blank. Religious people would say that those chaps hadn’t really died. Spiritualists would say they’d come back and lost any memory of what happened over the border. I’d say — I’m dying for some of those clams — ”
I lay dying in a coffin in Haiti and thinking of Pete in the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York. Hot tears made scalding vermilion flashes in the black that blindfolded my eyes. Poor little thing, she’d only wanted a few clams. Lord! and how she’d hate me for calling her “poor little thing.” “Nerts!” she’d say, lighting a cigarette on her last match. She’d said it that night, with that way she had of standing up to me with her hands thrust in her pockets. No money in those pockets, but they always looked trim. I liked pockets. Pete wore tailored suits with little pockets in the jacket. Blue gabardine, mostly. Navy blue. You had to be sensible around Manhattan when you worked for an artist who wasn’t in the dough. “I can take it,” she used to say. Freckles on her nose, independent without being pert. She had always been wonderful.
Used to say! Had been! God! already I was calling her in past tense. Well, I’d be in the past tense pretty soon, and damn me, I deserved it. Double deserved it. If I’d kept my mouth shut Pete wouldn’t have come to this island. I’d brought her to this abominable château. If I’d painted harder and studied harder in Paris without helling around the Dome like a fake, if I’d done something with my life when I had it, Pete and I would be married and this horrible business wouldn’t have happened. My God, to think of her killed, shot down by that thing! If I could only have gotten my fingers on the throat under that black cape; if I could only have ripped into that fish-eyed creature out of its coffin. Who? Who was that monster resurrected from Uncle Eli’s grave with yellow oil paint on its shoes —
“Oh God — God, get me out of here — Please, God — ”
There arrived a time, down in the midnight airless dark of that coffin, when I wanted to pray; when I had to chew my teeth into my underlip to keep from hollering for a celestial mercy that might have been inclined not to recognize my voice. Comfort is the reward for the steadfast in faith; not for the last-minute convert frightened by the show-down.
“You’ve got to die sometime,” I bellowed at myself. “Everybody does!”
The difference being that most people aren’t buried beforehand and don’t have to watch it coming. Most people think they are never going to die. Crowds in cities rushing pell-mell past the undertakers, laughing and snapping their fingers and jazz singing and cursing, mobbing for theaters and restaurants and stock markets and assignations — dying every one of them — condemned by every clock-tick — never knowing —
“Hoo-hoo-hoo — ”
Wasn’t that a laugh! I suppose the hearsy confinement, the ground-cold, the heavy stali
ng of black air was making me a little morbid. My throat had become a herring; pressure tightened a tourniquet on my skull. Redness that wasn’t exactly color swam behind my eyelids. I could hear my lungs wheezing like a broken accordion in the overpowering dark. I could hear my heels tapping a routine on the hardwood floor. Thoughts crisscrossed, darted, flashed, half formed and fled around my mind like scared minnows in an opaque bowl. Was it going to hurt? Would it be like drowning? How many feet of earth were over me now? Was the grave filled; were they patting flat the mound with their shovels? Pete in the Grand Central. Pete lying dead in some evil corner of that château. I mustn’t think of that. The pain of that thought would burst my head. I couldn’t take any more of this. I couldn’t stand the panting of those lungs that didn’t belong to me, the clatter of those heels on the floor, fighting, still fighting to get out. Hey, let me out, let me out! Was I doing all that yelling? Maybe this was that stream of consciousness stuff. I’d never been able to get through Ulysses. If I could only think of books. Some comforting line. Keep that château out of my mind, that house where everyone was killed. Had I ever killed anyone? In the war? Was there any difference between a soldier and a murderer? Was Manfred, who had butchered three women, worse than I, whose machine-gun might have butchered dozens of men? Maybe Manfred’s women had carped, whined, teased him about his birthmark. Maybe the men I’d killed had been good men, honest men, brave men. Maybe God was punishing me for that, for wasting my time. But I hadn’t known any better. God wouldn’t punish people who didn’t know any better. Only that would let the En-sign out, too. That might excuse the devil who’d shot down Pete. No, no, there must be some reward. There must be something afterwards —
I heard myself call out loud, “But those two garage mechanics didn’t feel anything.”
I shouted, fought to sit up, mashed my forehead against the invisible roof, fell back writhing.
“Take it like a man,” I screamed at myself.
“But, God, just give me a chance. Just a chance at that thing who shot Pete!”
“There’s no such thing as a zombie!” I shouted.
“Quit bawling,” I howled at myself, “the heart just stops — ”
“But there was a stake through Uncle Eli’s heart,” I bellowed. “I saw the wound in the cloak. He came out alive. He shot her! Pete — Pete — Pete — ”
I remember the smothering as a great muff of feathers closing over my mouth and nose, a giddy slowing of the heart, a ballooning sensation in the head. I was shouting, fighting at my bonds, but I couldn’t hear anything. A lot of little doors broke open in my brain and a pell-mell horde of words, mental pictures, sensations and color discords came jumbled and flashing through the dark like one of those Russian films show-big buildings at angles and objects, faces, expressions, incidents kaleidoscoping. The heart was pounding on my ribs like an engine which had thrown its governor, shaking my skeleton to pieces. Crimson streamed and shot through the black, spread into spokes of rainbow color, pinwheeled. Ambrose, Sir Duffin, the En-sign, Widow Gladys, Manfred, Toadstool, Ti Pedro — faces spinning in the wheel. A doctor in white sauntered up a terrace and fell beside an iron coach dog. A little old darkey with a face like a raisin was reading a sullen will. A mulatto officer brandished a sabre while the wheel whirled furiously against an old rainy house dripping with vines, and Pete was a shadow, wide-eyed with fear, while I stood there squeezing and squeezing on a black revolver that only typewritered in my icy hand. A one-eyed silhouette was standing upright in a rosewood coffin and fanning the pinwheel with spread, whipping arms.
Faster, faster went the pinwheel.
“I can’t breathe,” I was screaming. “I can’t breathe — ”
Something was choking me from behind, and Pete, who was a shadow, was calling my name, calling my name —
The pinwheel broke. It soared into midnight, dwindled, hung, fell like a shooting star and struck me straight between the eyes. Darkness smashed around me into a million confetti sparks, then the bottom dropped out of everything.
XIII.
Dead or Alive!
It was queer how the voice persisted, penetrant through nebulous, foggish, swimmy barrier that had no substance or form — a called name hunting through vacancy — like a lost messenger running in the misty corridors of a cloud palace, paging me in emptiness. An echo trying to find the place where echoes go.
“Cart — Oh, Cart — ”
I’d dreamed this dream before; only this time it wasn’t a dream because I was dead. But the dream persisted with the voice, and the voice was bringing a misty effulgence through the fog. The little echo carried a candle as it ran this way and that, seeking its way home.
“Cart — ”
This gray mist brightened to pale yellow, like the shine of sun on the underside of a thunderhead. Fog wreathed, curled, and through its luminous vapors formed the recollection of a face; a memory that blurred and retreated, swam into focus like something seen through tears, clarified and was there. Muscles in me struggled to sit me upright.
I thought, “Pete, is that you?”
The echo was drawing nearer. “Cart — Cart — can you hear me? — please answer — please — ”
I thought, “Sure, I can hear you, Pete. Those two mechanics were wrong about the blank.”
The echo and the candleshine and the face merged together, sound, form and color in a point of opalescent light behind smoke. “Please come on — Please don’t lie there, Cart — Please don’t fall again— There no — stand up — up — ” I was supine with sleep, dreaming I could hear Pete’s voice, seeing her face in a mist. Mist fluttered and whispered, the yellow shine moving ahead of me and Pete’s dim features just beyond the shine. She was reaching out her arms to me, and I was struggling to move after them through the dream. Just as I would touch them, the dream would end. Then the voice would come paging me; I would see the light; fight to my feet and move on.
“A little farther — just a little farther, Cart — I can’t drag you — Please — ”
I laughed idiotically; banged my head hard against something; dragged to my feet and opened one eye. Pete seemed to be there with a candle in her hand, propping me up against a black wall with her arm. Tears were silver on her face. She was shaking me angrily. She was teasing at me to move, to come on, to stand up and get going, as the Widow Gladys had taunted Toadstool up the staircase. For a minute I thought we were on the staircase. Pete said very cleanly, “Careful of these steps — ”
But the dream washed into darkness and I thought we were moving in a tunnel. Close walls on either side and a heaviness of dust, black as carbon, and I seemed to be stumbling and colliding, fumbling with Pete and the light. I thought I said, “Raisin bread down here!” and I thought I could hear Pete saying, “Yes, Cart. Yes — please come on — ”
In the dream I stumbled dizzily, on and on, and Pete was towing me by the hand, imploring me to follow. I heard her say, “Take slow, deep breaths.” Then I thought I was taking slow, deep breaths. Immediately her voice spoke out of memory so cleanly that I thought it wasn’t a dream. I thought I opened one eye and stared at a blazing candle and Pete was there clear as day.
“Thank God!” she cried. “We’re there now. There’s some whisky here. Can you hear me?”
“Where are we?” My voice was as loud as reality.
“The house,” came the words, distinct as speech. “Slowly here. Steps. You take the candle and I’ll go first — ”
I seemed to reach out to take the candle. Then I fell on steps I couldn’t see with the candle, smashed the diminutive flame under a clumsy sprawl, inhaled a mouthful of cobweb, slipped off into oblivion. In oblivion I was choking. Coughing and choking. I threw my head back to stop it. Something cracked on the back of my head. I woke up.
I woke up sitting against the roll-top desk in the office under the stairs, my legs outsprawled in front of me, my back supported by the desk; and Pete had a hand under my chin and was pouring whisky from a square bro
wn bottle into my teeth. Atop the desk a wax candle blinked, directing a shadow-dance along the inverted stairway of the ceiling. I could hear rain throwing itself in gusts against the dim blue shine of the little church window. I stared, swallowing fire, at the panel in the wall near the squat iron safe; and made out a ghostly inner flight of steps that must be the passage up to Uncle Eli’s wardrobe. I had a fuddled impression I’d just taken a headlong fall down those cobwebby steps. I burned another gulp down my throat, and was all at once aware of a sound beyond the immediate somewhere, a sort of mass-meeting, many-tongued babble deadened by closed doors.
“I’m alive,” I whispered tentatively. Reality in my own voice shocked me into gasping. “Pete! I’m alive!”
Kneeling beside me, she put a wrist over her eyes and began to cry. We were in that office! The stairway, sound of rain, the candle glimmer, noise beyond the door, Pete — I threw a hand to my aching face — Lord, what a headache! A cauliflowered eye! Electrified by a queer inner triumph, an awareness of life, I grabbed Pete’s arm, drew her fiercely against me.
“I’m all right, Pete. Pete, I was knocked cold. Must have been this blow on my eye. I — I’ve been out — ”
“I thought you were gone,” she sobbed, faint-voiced. “I couldn’t bring you out of it. It was terrible. Then you began to breathe. You crawled to your feet. Just as you’d come around you’d faint again. I had to drag you, beg you — ”
She drew back a little, knuckling her eyes, and I panted at her, “My God, I dreamed I was dead. A terrible dream. I dreamed we’d dug up Uncle Eli’s coffin. Something — a thing black and alive — came out of the grave. With paint, yellow paint on his shoe — ” A little bomb of memory exploded under my stabbing scalp. “He said he’d killed you, Pete. Shot you dead! There’d been a fight — Cacos attacked the hill — that harelipped gendarme rushed me! That’s it! That must have been when I was hit!”
Murder On the Way! Page 19
